A Passage to India takes place in Chandrapore, India. It's during the end of two centuries of British colonization, and cultural tensions between the Indians and local British are high. The British think of the Indians as inferior, and the Indians see the British as ignorant and oppressive. Needless to say there is nearly no socializing between the two groups.
             The story begins when two British women travel to India. They come over for a few reasons, and along the way decide that they must see the "Real India". During a night out one of the women meets a local Indian man who is surprised by her kindness to him. The two quickly develop a friendship over tea with a mutual friend and the other British women. A series of events leads to the destruction of the friendship between all of them and things descend back into the way it used to be, the two groups separated, not wanting anything to do with each other. Years down the road the local Indian runs into one of the British he befriended, and the two realize it wasn't their differences that pulled them apart, but that all the people and everything around them told them they shouldn't be friends. And that was what was really wrong.
             A Passage to India is a very simple story that conveys a much larger message about cultural understanding and acceptance.
             E. M. Forester was born in London in 1879. His father died while he was very young, so his single mother raised him. Graduating from Cambrige University in 1901, in 1912 he traveled to India and traveled extensively through the country. He witnessed first hand what life was like for the Indians, still under control from Britain. These experiences are what the story is based on. It shows in A Passage to India that Forester was troubled by the cultural separation that was occurring. He is very sympathetic to the Indians in his story. Being a homosexual himself, he was
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